


it comes to me as of a dream

by holograms



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Angst and Romance, Casual Sex, F/M, Friends With Benefits, Future Fic, Grief, Older Woman/Younger Man, so when the tag says jaime it’s a ‘kinda’
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-25
Updated: 2020-01-19
Packaged: 2020-07-19 20:53:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 14,425
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19980346
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/holograms/pseuds/holograms
Summary: Brienne meets a familiar stranger.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Walt Whitman’s “To a Stranger”
> 
> Passing stranger! you do not know how longingly I look upon you,  
> You must be he I was seeking, or she I was seeking, (it comes to me as of a dream,)  
> I have somewhere surely lived a life of joy with you,  
> All is recall’d as we flit by each other, fluid, affectionate, chaste, matured,  
> You grew up with me, were a boy with me or a girl with me,  
> I ate with you and slept with you, your body has become not yours only nor left my body mine only,  
> You give me the pleasure of your eyes, face, flesh, as we pass, you take of my beard, breast, hands, in return,  
> I am not to speak to you, I am to think of you when I sit alone or wake at night alone,  
> I am to wait, I do not doubt I am to meet you again,  
> I am to see to it that I do not lose you.

Winter was over, and then there was spring.

Nothing would compare to the brutal, grim winter with the Long Night, but the winter past was the coldest her son and all in his generation — the ones born after — have endured. There was to be a celebration in the Stormlands, celebrating the spring, and the continued cycle of life. Death, rebirth, and again and again.

“Will you enter the tourney?” asks Duncan, eager. He’s nearly bouncing on his heels.

“No.” Brienne was six-and-forty, far too old for such foolishness. There was also the fact that she could best anyone in a fight, and men don’t take kindly to a woman knocking them down, much less to one old enough to be their mother.

“I think I will,” Duncan says, seventeen and stupid.

She has to remember sometimes that he’s not Jaime’s, but he is  _hers_. He was a bastard, but she gave him the name  _of Tarth_ , and he  was hers in the ways that mattered. He was stubborn like her and he was blonde and he was skilled in combat, and under the endless southern sun, his skin has freckled.

“Just don’t embarrass yourself,” she tells him, and then adds, “Or me.”

“I promise,” he says, and then his face breaks into a grin and he runs off in the direction to the training yard.

So young. So dumb. 

And she loves him so much.

*

“Should be quite the shindig,” says Bronn. He holds his cup out to be refilled. Brienne does. She gave up arguing with him over senseless things a decade ago.

That was a few years after they started fucking.

“I suppose you want to enter the competition, too,” she says. “Show off.”

“I’d rather not break my hip, thanks.” He clicks his tongue, raises his brow at her. “But what about you, my lady?”

“I’m not. Duncan has already tried to convince me.”

“Afraid you’d lose?”

She scoffs. “As if.”

He smiles at her behind his cup.

She never gave up fighting. She would fight until she dies — she figures she’ll die in battle with Oathkeeper in her hands. Sometimes her knees ache when she first wakes in the morning and she’s a tad bit slower but she’s still faster than most and she’s still as strong as she ever was.

Bronn was not, however. He was older than her — just past his sixty-second nameday — and he’s been unwell recently. He moved to Tarth several years ago, before the winter, because the maesters said the temperate climate of the island would be good for his health, but Brienne has the suspicion that he was just lonely and wanted to be  _away_. She understands. And so, he named his firstborn son as Lord of Highgarden and he left to live in Brienne’s castle with her to annoy her for the rest of his days.

Not that she minds. She likes him, despite everything. He was the only person who didn’t treat her like she was going to break into a thousand pieces when Jaime died. If it was because he thought it was what she needed, or if it was because he was rude, it didn’t matter — it was what she wanted.

After one of the early council meetings, not long after everything, he walked alongside her in the hall. “He was a prick,” he told her, and she pretended to not know what he was talking about, but he pressed on, “I _said_ that twat Jaime Lannister was a prick for leaving you to go back to his crazy cunt of a sister.”

“Why do you care?” No one else cared about Jaime, or why he went back to his sister. No one thought to ask, like they didn’t think to ask why he killed the mad king.

“Because he was my friend,” Bronn said, and then he shrugged. “I suppose. As much as someone like him could have a friend.”

“Didn’t you threaten to kill him with a crossbow?”

“Didn’t you try to drown him in a river once upon a time?” he asked, and when Brienne gawked  _how did he know_ , he explained, “He told me. He told me a lot about you.”

And for some reason, it made her want to talk to him. Made her let him take her out for a drink (or four) and he delighted when she could drink him under the table and when she could beat him in a arm wrestle, and then she had a friend. She supposed. 

Both stayed in Kings Landing for years, and they were friends, mostly. They had sparred nearly every day —  _dates_ , Bronn called them. It helped, to fight with the man who taught Jaime how to use a sword again. He was rude, but she didn’t expect anything different.  _Gods, you’re noisy, do you grunt like that when you’ve got a cock in ya?_ he’d say and he kept on and on and he smiled every time she kicked him into the dirt and she wanted very much to bash his head in, but she began to think she would miss him if she killed him, so.

Three years into their tentative friendship, she had enough — “Alright.”

He blinked at her. “What?”

“Let’s have sex,” she said, and he choked on his surprise.

But then he immediately recovered and followed her to her room.

“What finally convinced you?” he asked. “I’ve seen you checking out my arse, I knew you wanted me.”

“I just want you to shut up about it,” but the truth was that he was the only man besides Jaime who wasn’t afraid of her or who didn’t treat her like a freak or like a conquest to be had, and she wanted to do it because he wasn’t like Jaime at all — he wasn’t pretty and he didn’t look at her like the sun rose and set with her. He appreciated her, and that was enough.

She took him to her bed and let him fuck her in the same room Jaime used to sleep in. The Lord — now Lady — Commander’s room. She knew it wasn’t the worst thing the walls have seen.

“Am I the first one to get you to bed since golden boy?”

“No,” she said and she put her hand on him and he stopped asking questions. All men were the same, in that regard.

(There was some truth to it: a year to the day after Jaime died (along with a million others), her and Tyrion got very _very_ drunk and they talked a lot and then they ran out of things to say, and so she kissed him instead. Just a soft press of her lips to his — more friendly, than anything. She felt him tense up and she thought she crossed some boundary but then he pressed back and parted his mouth and it was quite nice, for what it was. They laid in bed together — clothed, stripped down to their shirts and trousers — and he was so very sad. Sadder than her, she thought, if grief could be poured out and measured.

“I should have died instead of him,” Tyrion said. Everyone said he didn’t resemble his beautiful siblings at all, but Brienne saw the similarities between him and Jaime. They had the same kind eyes and the same frown and the same _goodness_ inside . 

She kissed him again. “Rest,” she told him. 

He did, and she did too. She slept better than she had in a year — except she woke up feeling the warmth of a body snug next to her and she thought _Jaime_ but then she remembered all over again and she tried not to cry but she did. Her sniffles woke Tyrion and he panicked, he said, “I thought — we didn’t — was it that bad? Did I hurt you?”

That startled her from her tears. “No! We didn’t! Just — just sleep.”

“I need to stop drinking,” Tyrion said. He did not, but they vowed to never speak of the incident again. Nor did Brienne kiss him again, save for once more in his lifetime.)

But Bronn was a good lay. He wasn’t too much into kissing, which was a disappointment, but it quelled that ache for it. He fucked her differently than Jaime did — Jaime was passionate and tender and made her feel loved, whereas Bronn just  _fucked_. He touched her where she wanted and he took her hard and fast and made her want more. She had thought she would remain chaste after Jaime but oh, she was a damn fool. 

“Enjoyed yourself, ser?” Bronn asked, after the first time.

“Yes,” she said through clenched teeth. She was sticky between her thighs and her body was wonderfully sore.

And she felt horribly guilty.

“I’m not asking you to love me,” he said. “Are you going to keep your legs together because that Lannister idiot went and got himself killed? Why deprive yourself from what you want?”

Why indeed.

So she didn’t argue against it when he said he very eloquently said,  _let me eat at your cunt_ _,_ and while he made her come very efficiently, she kicked him out of her bed when they were done.

“No spending the night.” She couldn’t let herself believe that maybe...

But Bronn stayed around, and here he was, years and years later, still annoying her.

“Please do the tourney, ser,” he says. “I’ll bet on you and split the profits.”

“Then I definitely won’t do it.” She drains the rest of her wine. “I shouldn’t. I’m lady of Tarth and a delegate of the Stormlands. I need to be...proper.”

“Since when have you gave a backflipping fuck about what’s proper?”

“It would probably come down to me and Duncan,” she says, making another excuse. “I don’t want to humiliate him in front of his friends.”

“You’re his mama. You could let him win.” 

She gives him a  _look_. 

“Fine,” he says. “I’ll bet on the bastard instead.”

*

She had mourned Jaime longer than she should have. She _still_ mourned him, even though it’s been over twenty years since he died. She supposes she’s lucky that she was with the love of her life, if even for a short while.

There had been plenty of suitors — King Bran didn’t have swear the Kingsguard to serve for life, nor forbid them from marriage or children or owning land — but the only man she wanted to marry was dead. She had plenty of men over the years — Bronn whenever they were in same place, men she didn’t care to learn the name of, dumbass Hyle Hunt until he went off to the mainland and was never heard from again, men from Dorne who were more beautiful than Jaime. Her father was known for his lovers, and so was she. 

It made her life easier, to be straightforward about what she wanted. She likes to think Jaime taught her that — 

(in Winterfell, his hand on her thigh and his mouth to her ear, “ _Brinny, dearest, tell me what you want.”_

_ “Don’t call me that,_ _”_ she said, laughing and he kissed her—)

— and even if she’s ugly she knows she is good in bed.

And there is no need for her to marry, because she has Duncan as her heir. 

She hadn’t known what to name him when he was born. Podrick suggested the name — “Didn’t you say Ser Duncan the Tall was your ancestor? He was one of the greatest knights of the land. It would be a name fit for a child of yours.” She looked down at him, her son, and said, “Duncan,” and it felt right.

“That’s perfect,” Tyrion said, laughing, when she told him. “May he be as tall as his namesake and as his mother.”

And when she presented him to her father as Duncan Storm of Tarth, he loved him without question.

*

After her morning duties, Brienne goes to the training yard to watch Duncan.

She needn’t help him train for this tournament; she made sure that he was _good_ many years ago. She hadn’t wanted to force him to do as she did, but she had hoped — and when he showed interest in the blade and said,  _I want to be a knight like you_ , she told him what her father told her:  _if you’re going to fight, you’re going to win_. She was tough on him, and sometimes unfair, but she worried incessantly about him. There were no wars but the wars of old arrived without warning and he had to be ready, and there was always the chance of an accidental blow to the head in a friendly spar, or uneasy footing on a cliff — he was a mere seven years old when she jumped off a cliff with his hand in hers and she made him swim to the shore, battling waves like his life depended on it. He would not die because of a mistake. Not him. Not her child. 

She turns, hearing someone come up beside her.

“Hello,” she says, acknowledging Pod. He smiles at her and stands next to her, watching Duncan.

“He told me you gave him permission to participate in the Spring Tournament,” Pod says.

“He would’ve without my permission.”

“He’s excited. He wants me to practice with him.”

“That would be good.” Duncan’s footwork is excellent, but he does get distracted at times and stumbles.

Even so, she constantly thinks:  _he will some day be better than me_ _._ She isn’t angry, but proud, like she was the first time Pod won against her. 

“ _Yield_ _!”_

Duncan’s voice carries across the yard as he knocks his opponent‘s weapon out of his hand. He puffs out his chest and Brienne would scold him about being prideful but she has a swell of pride of her own.

He notices Brienne and Pod looking at him from afar and then he swings his tourney sword around like it’s a longsword. 

“It’s uncanny that he’s much more like his uncle than his late father,” Pod says. 

Right — because she almost forgot again that he isn’t Jaime’s.

And not hers, either — not of her body. 

Sometimes she forgets that, too. 

*

She sails across the bay with Podrick, Duncan — and begrudgingly, Bronn — for the celebration in Storm’s End. She dresses in blue and wears the pendent that her father passed down to her, and that every Evenstar wore who came before her.

The dock is busy, but Lord Gendry is there to greet her when they arrive.

“Arya is with her nephews, but she will join us later,” Gendry says. His speech, no matter how practiced, still sounds of a low-born. “Sansa decided not to travel in her condition.”

“Is she going for a record for most babes born to one woman?” Bronn asks. “Or can Snow not keep off her?”

Gendry very politely ignores the topic.

He tells Brienne about the arrangements — people they are supposed to meet with, and he asks could she _please_ look over his speech because she’s a better writer than him, and she’s very bored already and looking for something to do, so much that her hand goes to Oathkeeper when someone collides into her.

“Pardon me,” mumbles a man with a mess of black hair and dark clothes, voice a thick Northern accent. A nobody. She should nod an acknowledgment and keep passing by, but—

—something makes her stop.

He’s young, in his early twenties. He’s shorter than her, and like people say about her, he looks  _interesting_ , which she doesn’t think is a compliment. Messy black hair that’s down to his shoulders and he’s clean shaven but she thinks it’s probably because he can’t grow a beard. His nose is unfortunate and he has dark circles under his eyes that make him look older than he really is. But he is nice to look at, and his eyes are dark and soulful and if she didn’t know better she would say she knows him from somewhere — like an old friend she hasn’t seen since she was a child.

“Ser?”

That’s Pod’s _concerned_ tone and she didn’t realize she had been staring at the young stranger — she catches herself and makes her apologizes and continues on with the others.

After several paces she looks over her shoulder. She can’t find the man. She doesn’t know why she cares — why she looked back — but she has the oddest feeling that she will see him again. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A tournament, a conversation, an almost.

One of Brienne’s worst days was when she was older than Jaime ever was.

When she turned forty-four, one year older than the age Jaime died, she imagined what he would have been like at forty-four — or sixty-five, what he would be, if he were alive. Would his hair be all grey? Would he be happier?

He was older than her when they met, but it was never a problem between them. She was so young, back then. She felt young still. And he had been so young…

_Live, fight, take revenge_ , she told him when he lost his hand. She did the same when she lost him — she lived and she fought, but she didn’t know how to take revenge. Against what? Cersei died with him and she couldn’t slay the dragon that caused the building to collapse. Should she have smashed the bricks to smithereens? Find the manifestation of misfortune and strangle it? He was more to her than a sword hand and nothing she could do could make up for the loss of him — but she would have gladly lost her hand if it meant he would live.

She locked herself in her room on that nameday. Bronn tried to coax her out and she told him _fuck off I don’t want your lemon cake_ , and Pod wasn’t successful, either. But she couldn’t refuse Duncan when he knocked on her door, sweetly asking, “Ma? Do you want to talk about it?”

She let him inside and he sat next to her and she told him about Jaime. He knew about Jaime — she didn’t hide anything from him — but she needed to remember Jaime. She told him of his kindness and she told him of his brashness and she told him the same stories he had already heard a hundred times. She told him that you shouldn’t wait to act on love, because death will not wait on you.

She tucked a blond curl behind Duncan’s ear. “He would have loved you.”

She hated that Jaime never met him. That if she drew a line where Jaime’s life began and ended and another where Duncan’s life started, they would never intersect.

*

Gendry asks Brienne to help people sign up for the tournament. It’s boring and she asks the same questions too many times. _Name? Where do you hail from? Weapon?_

“Name?”

“I thought you’d never ask.”

She looks up — it’s the young northerner from the dock, the one who gave her that odd feeling in her chest. That feeling rises again. She doesn’t like it, and she doesn’t like how he’s looking at her.

He leans on the table, grins. His long hair is tied up in a queue and it swings as he talks. His bottom teeth are crooked. “You’re Brienne of Tarth,” he says.

“Thank you, but I know who I am.” He’s an arrogant idiot, like most of the men she’s spoken to today. “I’m the one recording names.”

“Cameron Snow,” he says. “Bastard. Isn’t your son a bastard?”

She ignores his question. “I’m assuming you’re from the North, based on your name and accent.”

“Born in a small village outside of Winterfell,” the guy — Cameron — says. He talks as Brienne writes his information. “You’ve been to Winterfell, haven’t ya? I read you were a commander in the Battle of Winterfell.”

Brienne fights the urge to roll her eyes. He probably wasn’t even alive when that war happened.

“I’ve been to Winterfell often. Weapon?”

His face falls when she doesn’t entertain his question.

“Blade.” He smiles at her. “Maybe you and I will have a dance with our swords.”

“I am not participating,” she says, no-nonsense, and she can tell he’s about to try and change her mind so she gives him a paper. “Bring this with you. Good luck to you.”

“Don’t need it,” he says, and then he saunters off — but not before turning around and winking at her.

She’s experiencing another feeling because of him, but this one she is well familiar with: irritation.

*

She helps Duncan prepare for the tourney. She makes sure his armor is polished and she fusses over tightening the straps until he stops her.

“I’ll be fine,” he says. “I’m even not nervous.”

“You should be.” She touches the sunbursts and half moon sigil of Tarth that’s adorned on his dark blue armor. “It makes you overconfident. Careless.”

“Were you nervous before your first tourney?”

Brienne frowns. “No. But I was overconfident and naïve.” She thinks of beating Loras Tyrell, and smiles. “There are plenty you’ll easily defeat. People will expect you to be good because I’m your mother, and because...”

“Because of who my uncle was?”

“Yes.” Not that everyone believes her story. _That kid is a Lannister, no doubt, but he has to be—_ somehow everyone forgetting that Jaime was dead a long time before Duncan was born. She couldn’t deny him as a Lannister — he has the same emerald eyes and blond hair and same clever expressions, but people just assume—

“Let them think it,” Tyrion had said, when he was still alive. “I gave him to you because I didn’t want him to grow up around me. He deserves better than me. I’m not a good person, Brienne.”

“You _are.”_ She didn’t know why she was cursed to convince both brothers of the same thing, and fail. “Duncan adores you. He doesn’t care if you’re drunk half the time or because you’re short—”

“He’s three. He isn’t the best judge of character.“

Brienne let out an annoyed _humph_. There was no use arguing with a Lannister.

Nevertheless, she knew that Tyrion loved the kid. He visited often and he doted in Duncan, bringing him books and nice clothes and he stuffed bundles of coins into Brienne’s pockets even though she tried to refuse it.

However, she regretted encouraging the relationship when she had to tell Duncan that Tyrion had died. He crawled in her lap and sobbed into her shoulder and she held him and apologized that the world was so full of hurt.

She had never thought motherhood was for her, but she found that it was just like any other vow she had sworn. _Protect the innocent_.

Pod resigned from the Kingsguard when she did, saying, _I go where you go, m’lady_. It might’ve been selfish, but she was happy because she couldn’t imagine leaving him behind. She couldn’t have raised the babe without Pod — he had a better sense of what to do. He knew how to swaddle Duncan so he slept better and he took him from her arms when she couldn’t get him to settle, and he played silly games with him that made him squeal with laughter, and when Duncan’s first word was _Pod_ , it wasn’t a surprise.

It was good practice for his own children.

*

Brienne and Duncan argued often, but the worst was when he was fifteen.

“I want to join the Kingsguard,” he proclaimed proudly over breakfast.

“No,” Brienne said, simply. She shared a quick glance to Pod and Bronn, assuring that they would not get involved in this conversation.

Duncan stared at her like he was expecting her to say more, but she didn’t, so he continued, “But Jaime was fifteen when he joined.”

“He didn’t want to.” Jaime had confessed it to her one Winterfell evening — _Cersei manipulated me,_ he told her.

“You were in Renly’s Kingsguard, and in King Bran’s Guard,” Duncan said, trying a different tactic. “You were the Commander.”

“And I resigned my post.”

“Because of me.”

“Because I wanted to,” she corrected. It wasn’t a difficult decision to leave Kings Landing. The city was safe, and the king knew of danger before it came, and she was bored. She thought she was waiting for a reason to go.

“I want to do this,” Duncan said. “You’ve taught me of honor and helping others. Why don’t you support me?”

“I will always support you, but you will not do this. Not now, not ever.”

And Duncan swore and got up from his seat and stomped away.

Brienne sighed. Stubborn, just like a damned Lannister.

_Or like me._

Pod looked down at his plate, but his ears were red. Bronn, however, was terribly smug.

“The boy has a point,” he said. “Let him fuck up on his own. You can’t protect him from the world.”

“Choke on your toast,” she told him, rising from the table and leaving the room as dramatically as her son.

Duncan left his door unlocked — he expected her — and was sitting on sill and staring out the window, overlooking the cliffs and the distant ocean.

“I’m sorry I swore at you,” he said, not looking at her. “It’s just — I thought you’d want me to. I thought you’d be glad for me to follow in your footsteps.” He looked at her like she was the most incredible person in the entire world. "Do you think I’m not good enough?”

She felt like a failure as a mother.

She sighed, and sat next to him.

“Of course you’re good enough. You’re _too_ good,” she said. “If you really want to join the Kingsguard, I can’t stop you. But that life isn’t all that it seems. An honor, yes, but it takes and takes.”

_It was that white cloak that soiled me, not the other way around,_ Jaime told her. She often wondered what he would have thought about her joining. Probably: _idiot wench, haven’t I told you it’s not worth it? You and your damned honor—_

“You have to swear many oaths, and you lose track of yourself, cutting pieces of yourself away to serve to someone else and they don’t care. I don’t want that for you. It’s just — it’s just honor for honor’s sake.”

She expected more of an argument, or for him to reason with her — he was like his father in that regard — but instead he threw his arms around her and hugged her tight.

“I’m sorry,” he mumbled against her shoulder.

It wasn’t until later that she realizes the apology wasn’t for himself, but for her sorrow.

*

Brienne walks through the crowd with Duncan, giving him last minute advice.

“Remember, Lyanna uses Braavosi style. She’s swift and will have you tripping over your feet before you can get in a good hit—”

“I _know_ , Mother,” Duncan says. “I’ve sparred with her since we were kids.”

“You’re still a kid.”

Duncan abruptly stops and faces her.

“I’ll be fine,” he says. He stands to his full height, only a few inches shy of hers. He looks older in his armor and his expression is stern and she can’t help but wonder just when did he grow up. What happened to the little boy who sat on her lap and made her tell stories of knights and dragons?

She pats his shoulder. “Kick some ass.”

He smiles. “Love you too, Ma.”

*

She sits in a box with the other major Stormland houses to watch the tournament. Pod and Bronn accompany her, sitting on either side of her. She dressed casually today, in dark blue trousers and a soft leather jerkin over a matching blue tunic. Even though she isn’t participating, it felt incongruous for her to wear fancy clothes to such an event.

The first few trials go on without much difficultly. Duncan easily wins against a knight from Mistwood. The lords sitting around Brienne congratulate her on his skill.

“Regret not joining in on the fun?” Pod asks, leaning in so only she would hear.

“I’ve had enough fun,” she says, and then, sardonic, “I thought I would give someone else a chance.”

She isn’t that impressed with many, if she’s being honest. There aren’t swordsmen like there used to be.

Her attention is drawn to a new competitor on the field. A Northman who doesn’t have a sigil of his own, and is wearing well-worn armor; it’s awkward on his body, clearly not made for him. But he moves confidently, and Brienne can’t take her eyes off him—

He passes by her box and lifts his helm and it’s _that_ guy. Cameron.

“Hello, ser,” he says, his voice dripping charm, “good to see you again,” and he winks and rushes to his the center of the arena.

Bronn punches her shoulder. “He was flirting with you!”

“Was not,” but damn it, it’s too late and she’s blushing. She feels like an idiot, blushing because some young man has crush on her.

She hates men. All of them.

Save for Duncan. And her late father. And Podrick. And Bronn, on certain days. And she didn’t hate Jaime.

She expects Cameron to get knocked on his ass within a minute, but he doesn’t. He does quite well, actually. It’s obvious he hasn’t had any formal training, but he doesn’t need it — he’s a natural. His sword and body move together as one fluid entity, fast and sharp, his swordhand strong and sure.

His left.

It’s silly, but she checks to make sure he has both of his hands. He does.

She doesn’t know if she expected him not to.

He could end the fight — there are plenty of openings but he keeps going, teasing, lazily blocking strikes and then returning his own, just enough to keep his opponent at odds. It’s effortless for him and everyone notices — they start to cheer for him and then when the crowd is at a roar, he trips his opponent with a flourish and wins.

He turns in Brienne’s direction and bows.

Arrogant shithead.

The day drags on, as does the tournament. Duncan wins every trial, and it’s almost as good as her winning herself. He wins against Gendry and Arya’s water-dancing daughter and Gendry thumps her on the back and says, “he’s just like you,” and she about bursts with joy.

Cameron, the unusual Northerner wins every one of his trials, too. So, she sees the end result happening before it does — that the final trial is Duncan versus Cameron.

She pulls Duncan aside before the fight.

“He’s tricky and stronger than he looks, and he uses his left hand so guard your left instead of your right—”

“I’ve been watching him, I know.”

He’s tired, she knows, but she has every confidence that he will beat that northern idiot.

There’s smudge of dirt on his nose. She licks her thumb and wipes it away. He squirms, complains, “ _Mother_.”

“Go,” she orders, and she takes her seat in the stands.

“If your boy wins, I’ll win enough to buy you something pretty,” Bronn says. “Perhaps a—”

“I would rather you give me your silence.”

“Let me keep my mouth busy and you’ll have my silence. You, however, would be quite loud—”

She stomps on his foot, which quiets him, for the moment.

Duncan and Cameron go onto the field. They’re announced — _Cameron Snow, bastard of the North_ and _Duncan of Tarth, son of Brienne_.

Duncan extends his hand for Cameron to shake. Good sportsmanship. Cameron takes it, but Brienne can see that for him it’s just for show.

Then the bell sounds and the fight begins. Duncan steadies, waits for Cameron to make the first attack. Smart — it’s what she would do. It seems to rattle Cameron, and impulsively he swings with his sword two-handed. Duncan dodges it and the fight goes quickly after that — fast paced and unforgiving. The kind of fight Brienne lives for. She leans forward in her seat, her heart racing in her ears. It’s a tough match, each blow countering the other. They get in a few strikes each — Duncan takes a hit to his back that makes Brienne cringe, but then he smacks Cameron in the head with his gauntlet. Duncan gains ground but then Cameron takes it back and it’s a push and shove—

She sees it before it happens — Cameron is taunting Duncan to follow him and Duncan lunges too far, leaving himself unprotected, and Cameron disarms Duncan, flinging his sword several feet away in the dirt.

Brienne rises to her feet. Duncan is uninjured but she knows by the slouch of his shoulders that he’s upset, and it feels as though _she’s_ lost. She hadn't anticipated this, and nobody else did either. There’s a surprised collective gasp from the crowd, and then scattered slow applause as Cameron pulls off his helm and swings his hair loose, waves to the crowd.

“Your new boyfriend cost me my bet,” Bronn says, and Brienne would stomp on his foot again but she’s busy watching Cameron. He walks to the podium and oh _fuck_ she forgot about this part — her stomach lurches when he takes the flower crown in his hands, and she prays to the gods that if they have any mercy he will go to anyone else, but no, he stops in front of her box and presents the crown to her.

“Ser Brienne,” Cameron says. “I name you Queen of Love and Beauty.”

“Oh, no,” Pod whispers, next to her. Others snicker — she likes to think it’s more at this idiot than at her. It hasn’t mattered as much that she’s ugly since she’s been older, but the mocking makes her feel thirteen again.

She sneers at Cameron. “I refuse it.”

His mouth curls into a grin. “Then I challenge the Evenstar to a fight.”

She shouldn’t. She shouldn’t give him the satisfaction, and she shouldn’t let him _get_ to her, but her blood runs hot and everyone around her is telling her _do it!_ and her mind, if not her heart, tells her the same.

“I accept.”

She takes off her cloak and hands it to Pod. He holds it, never untrained from squiring for her.

“Do you want me to fetch your armor?”

“I won’t need it,” Brienne tells him.

She walks onto the arena, tall, confident, resolute. This is what she’s meant for — it always calls her back.

Duncan runs up to her with his helm off, his hair messy and his face damp with sweat.

“I’m sorry, I don’t know what happened—”

“It’s alright.” She looks to her side and gives him a soft smile. “You fought well.”

She takes his sword and sends him to watch from the sideline. Cameron stands a few feet away from her, waiting. She takes her stance, ready.

It’s been said she’s the greatest swordsman — woman —  in the land. She supposes it’s true. She has plenty of accolades. Beat the Hound in single combat. Killed hundreds of white walkers at Winterfell. The first Lady Commander. Guardian of Peace.

The last true knight.

_That was Jaime_.

She often thinks of when he knighted her — his eyes shone bright in the firelight and his hand trembled and he was so nervous but he was never nervous and he smiled at her and that was when she knew—

he loved her.

At times she swears she hears his voice when she fights _— watch your right_ or _good job, wench_ or _you can do better than that_ — and in the moment she almost believes that he’s still at her side, but he’s gone, taken from her, and all she has is memory.

Brienne shouts when she attacks Cameron first. He stumbles backwards and she thinks maybe she will knock him down with one singular blow, but he remains standing. She doesn’t give him a chance to recover and she lunges forward, all offense.

He steps out of her way, just in time.

He _is_ good.

That pisses her off more.

She usually holds back in friendly fights — it’s unfair — but she’s had enough. She uses her size to her advantage and barrages against him, but he won’t fucking stop either. He’s all risk. She hears his delighted gasp when his sword gets so close to her that she hears it slice through the air, and then he counters a difficult combination that would have defeated almost anyone else. It’s like he knows what she’s going to do before she does it — like how she feels. Sparring with someone who uses their left is familiar. Too familiar.

She wants to beat him as quickly as possible — he likes to be flashy and she wants to stop him, show him that he’s an idiot. She wants to humiliate him — how _dare_ he crown her as champion’s queen, and who was he thinking he is, challenging the best in the land?

And how dare he actually be a challenge?

It’s exhilarating. Most are not good enough to be a real challenge, and others are afraid of her. But this man has her in tangles. She’s sweating and her hair has come down from where she kept it pinned back and she’s breathing hard and her muscles ache.

She briefly wonders if she’s let herself go, but no, of _course_ not, and she curses this insufferable man for making her doubt herself.

Aiming for a final blow, she swings over her head and down.

Steel meets steel.

Their swords grind against each other. If she was using Oathkeeper, his sword would have been cut in two, but she presses on. She’s stronger than him and his sword scrapes against hers as she overtakes him, it sliding down to the hilt. She grits her teeth so hard her jaw is sore. He’s close enough to her that they could speak.

She knocks his sword out of his hand with her elbow, and then pushes him into the dirt.

She points her sword at his neck. “Yield.”

He takes off his helm and smiles up at her, infuriatingly dazzling.

“I yield,” he says.

Good enough.

She reaches to help him to his feet — he stands and he’s very close, their faces almost touching, and the strangest urge to _kiss_ him overwhelms her.

She pushes him away from her, and she walks off the arena to sound of her name chanted.

*

She thinks she embarrassed Cameron so badly that he would leave her alone, but she is unlucky.

He seeks her out in the evening, during the feast. She’s sitting with the other lords and ladies of the Stormlands. Gendry makes a pained expression and she turns around and Cameron standing there, with his hands behind his back.

“Ser? May I have a word?” he asks — more humble, now.

He really is an idiot.

She leads him out of the room, anyway.

“I wanted to thank you for the good fight,” he says when they’re outside. Brienne is very aware they are alone. “It got my juices flowing.”

She scoffs. “What do you want?”

“If I’m to be honest, ser,” he says, taking a step closer. “I wanted to talk to you. Fight you.”

“Are you satisfied now that you’ve done it?”

“Not really.” He considered her, looked her up and down. “All my life I’ve been hearing — _Brienne of Tarth, what a brilliant swordsman!”_ He smiled. “You were slower than I expected. And more predictable.”

Her first instinct is to laugh, but then she has a disconcerting feeling like she’s forgotten something.

She shakes it off.

“I beat you,” she says.

“If I hadn’t been fighting with others all day, I would have won.”

“Sure.”

Gods, he’s so arrogant. She wants to punch him, shove him in the mud, pull his stupid hair, she wants—

They move together at the same time.

“You wanted to kiss me,” Cameron says, low. “Before, after the fight.”

He’s so close, she feels his breath on her face. Sees his long ink-black eyelashes.

“No,” she says. “You appall me.”

“That’s alright. You don’t have to like me to kiss me.”

“In your dreams.”

They move with each other like they did when they fought. Heated, volatile, uncertain. Brienne bites her lip and his eyes flicker down to her mouth, and when he looks back up to her his eyes are dark, hungry. Warmth curls low in her belly — she wants him, she knows that now, but it feels more than lust, something like:

_finally_.

He puts his hand to her face, slides his fingers into her hair, and she realizes it’s the first time they’ve touched skin-to-skin and she closes her eyes—

_Jaime_.

The memory is so strong she feels sick. She shudders and gasps — he mistakes it for desperation and he goes to kiss her, but she pushes him away.

“Sorry,” she says, and leaves Cameron alone in the courtyard. She doesn’t look back.

She doesn’t stop until she’s at her room. She doesn’t talk to anyone, she doesn’t look at anyone. She shuts the door behind her, and rests her forehead against it.

She remembers now — why it’s so familiar. Why Cameron doesn’t feel like just some random fuck. It’s because she had the same conversations with Jaime — _it gets our juices flowing,_ Jaime said to the Bloody Mummers, she remembers his smug grin and fear in his eyes _—_ and Cameron fought like Jaime and he touched her like he already knew her body — and that part of her that is Brienne is saying _it’s Jaime, he came back for you._

She must be going mad. It can’t be. She must not be remembering correctly. It has been so very long without him. She’s just met some idiot with a good left hand and easy smile and a smart mouth and she wanted so badly...

She cries for Jaime. She allows herself that grief, every few years.

*

She dreams of Jaime that night. Beautiful, perfect, hers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Everyone experiences and handles grief differently.


	3. Chapter 3

“I saw you leaving last night with that young northern lad,” Bronn says at breakfast. “Did he get a poke in ya with his sword?” 

“Piss off.” Brienne sips her coffee. “I had a peaceful night with no men.”

That was a lie. The night wasn’t peaceful, and she had the memory of Jaime with her. She doesn’t care about the northerner either — he isn’t Jaime. Nobody could be Jaime.

“Cameron Snow was in the tavern all evening,” says Pod. “He was very drunk.”

“Probably because some tall knight broke his wee heart.” Bronn smirks at her. “Ser Brienne, destroyer of hearts.”

Brienne pats his face. “Bitterness doesn’t suit you, dear.”

“And yet, my offer is still available.”

She would smack him, if he wouldn’t mistake it as affection. 

She rises from the table, goes to leave.

“Going to find your northern lad?” he asks.

She makes a rude gesture as she goes through the door.

*

“I didn’t think it was true.”

Brienne closed her eyes. She had hoped she would be gone before he came back.

“It’s not yours,” Brienne said. She bouncedDuncan, willing him to  _sleep_ . He was restless, like he knew he wasn’t hers. That he was passed off, unwanted. That she regretted it, when she allowed herself to think of it.

Bronn sauntered closer, tilted his head at her. And the baby.

“Could be. We fuck all the time. I’ve been gone from the city for six moons and I come back and you’ve got a newborn babe.”

“Bronn.”

“Heard it was actually Jaime Lannister’s,” he said. He sat next to Brienne, touched one of Duncan’s soft curls. “He looks like a Lannister brat.”

Softly, she said: “You know he isn’t his.”

“Obviously. I’m the master of coin. I can count. It’s been nearly five years since the idiot got himself killed, and while I’m no maester, I know babes don’t stay in the womb that long.”

“People will believe what they want.” She had her own beliefs. Like: She was doing the right thing. She could be a mother. Jaime and her were going to be happy.

“I understand why people think it,” Bronn said. “They think it must be Jaime’s, because you wouldn’t raise any kid but his.”

She looked down at Duncan, sleeping against her shoulder. He drooled on her shirt. She held him close, and he smelled of milk and sleep and newness.

“I never wanted — I never  thought  I would raise children.”

Her and Jaime talked about it.  _They would be very tall, and very blond_ ,  Jaime had said.  _With your eyes, I hope._

_And your good looks_ _,_ Brienne said, and Jaime guffawed and said,  _I think their mother is quite beautiful_ _,_ and she kissed him, that  _liar_ —

“I’m doing it because Lord Tyrion asked me,” she said.

Bronn laughed. “I think you can fuckin’ drop the formalities since you’re raising his child as your own.”

“He’s mine. _Only_ mine.” When Tyrion first asked her, she said  _absolutely not_ but then she saw the babe and she felt like he needed her. That he belonged to her. And so, she vowed that she would protect him and try to love him—

—but she was afraid to love him because everyone she loves dies. 

“I don’t think you mind caring for the babe,” Bronn said, and Brienne knew that whatever he said next was going to be terrible. “You can pretend it’s Jaime’s. His other kids called him  _uncle,_ so this one wouldn’t be much different.”

“Just because I’m holding a baby doesn’t mean I won’t stab you.”

“Ah, I like it when you threaten bodily harm. It turns me on.”

“I hate you,” she said, but she didn’t, not really — she liked his honesty and she liked that he sparred with her and she liked his cock and she liked his humor when he wasn’t being gross or rude — and she hated that he _knew_ all of that.

He tucked her hair behind her ear and kissed her temple, asked, “Are you alright?”

She hated it when he was kind to her.

“I’m fine.” But she wasn’t alright. 

*

She finds Duncan training in the yard. He’s by himself — most everyone else is hungover or still sore from losing in the tournament. But he practices drills over and over, cursing to himself when he doesn’t get it perfect.

He gets that from her.

“Missed you at breakfast,” she calls out to him. He pauses, turns around to look at her.

“I wanted to get started as soon as possible,” he says, then adds, “I ate something. Don’t worry.”

She worries anyway. She figures that’s what love is:  worry.

She picks up a dulled practice sword. “Want to practice with your old mother?”

“You can still kick my ass,” he says, smiling.

She lets him win a few rounds. He almost beats her once. He’s growing up.

*

She goes to the docks to ready their ship for the journey back to Tarth on the morrow. The deckhand would prepare it, but she doesn’t like to put her safety entirely in the care of someone else. She checks the sail and makes sure the ropes aren’t frayed; the distance between Storm’s End and Tarth is short, but far enough that she wouldn’t want to be stranded.

“Ser?”

She thought she was alone but she leans over the rail and it’s  him. Cameron.

He waves up at her.

She had convinced herself it was all in her head — wishful thinking — but then he smiles at her like _that_ and she feels a long ago echo.

And that’s why she doesn’t tell him to stop when he climbs up, and why she holds out her hand for his when he steps on board.

“Hey,” he says. “I’m sorry about last night.”

He isn’t pretty. If he was Jaime — had been Jaime — she would think that he should always be handsome.

But beauty doesn’t really matter, does it?

“Nothing happened,” she says. Nothing.

The wind blows between them. It’s going to storm soon — a quick squall, one that develops upon itself. 

She asks, “Are you going back home?”

He shrugs. “I don’t have any money. I spent most of it getting here, and then I gambled a bit...”

She laughs. “You bet on yourself.”

“Aye, possibly.” A small flush colors his cheeks. “I didn’t expect you to take my offer to fight me.”

“I thought that’s why you came here.” She steps closer to him. “You wanted to beat me.”

He shakes his head, sending his black hair tossed around, and then he looks up at her sorrowful, like he’s pleading with her to understand—

“Truth is,” he says, “I came here because...”

_I came to Winterfell because—_ Jaime said, and it wasn’t until weeks later that he told her,  _because I love you._

They both flinch at a roar of thunder and then it begins to rain — it comes down fast and heavy, unforgiving. Blinding, and deafening.

Cameron tries to shout over it. “I came here because—”

Lightning interrupts him, illuminating the sky dark indigo and purple.

She grabs his hand and drags him underneath the deck, to the room cargo is kept. It’s obvious he’s from the North — the ship is securely docked but it rocks on the waves, and he’s unsteady on his feet. He trips and falls against her. She helps him stand, leads him to lean against the wall. 

They’re quiet for a moment, listening to the downpour around them. Light filters through the slats of wood above, but they are mostly in shadows. He’s close. She hears him shivering. She thought he would be used to the cold, but rain-cold is different than snow. She finds her bearing and lights an oil lamp, bathing them in a golden glow.

Cameron is pressed against the wall, and he looks pathetic — his hair wet and sticking to his forehead, his sodden clothes dripping a puddle onto the floor — but in this light, he could almost be...

“I felt like I was supposed to,” Cameron says, softly. “I saw you years ago — you came to Winterfell. I was just a boy. You were in the Queen’s nameday tourney, and I thought you were incredible. But I...I know it sounds insane, but it felt like I _knew_ you —”

She kisses him. She has to know.

He gasps, a surprised stuttered, “ _O-oh,_ ” and his eyes are so _so_ wide and dark and it looks like he’s going to say something but she kisses him instead. 

“Don’t,” she says. She doesn’t want to think about it because if she did she would stop and she doesn’t want to—

He isn’t a great kisser. She figures he hasn’t kissed many girls, but he rubs against her leg and she feels that he’s hard. She would wait for him to make the moves but she thinks he’ll come in his pants if she doesn’t hurry it along, so she tugs at his jacket and slips it off him, and he goes,  _oh please yes_ ,  and then all their clothes are on the dusty floor and so are they.

The storm continues outside.

He lies on his back and she straddles his hips. He gapes at her and she would think he thinks she’s unpleasant to look at if his cock weren’t leaking without even being touched. His breathing hitches when she wraps her hand around him and she lowers herself down slow, taking him inside her. He moans, loud enough to be hear over the thunder, and he thrusts up meeting her. She places a hand on his chest and rocks forward, grinding. Water drips from her hair onto his face. He blinks. He looks up at her, overwhelmed. Like he—

“You can touch me,” she says, and his hands scramble at her hips. At her breasts. Strong hands, kind touch. He’s clumsy. He laughs, nervous. It’s endearing. She leans forward and kisses him. He comes, suddenly —  _a green lad,_ Brienne muses — his whole body shuddering and he whines,  _sorry,_ as he releases inside her.

It was unsatisfying and too fast but it was good. She lays next to him and they look at at each other and she realizes she didn’t think of Jaime at all when they were fucking but now she is and she remembers his touch and his kisses and his love— 

She stands on shaky legs. Gathers her clothes and puts them on.

“Did I do something wrong?” Cameron sits up. The rain has stopped. It is too quiet.

“No. I — this was a mistake.” She shoves her feet into her boots, hastily tucks in her tunic. “I’m sorry.”

He catches her by her wrist.

“Don’t leave me,” he says. “Please.”

“Goodbye,” she tells him.

She does not turn back.

*

“Did you go for a swim?” Bronn asks.

She pushes past him and goes into his room without responding. She strips off her clothes without asking. They land on the floor _flop_ wet .

“Uh.” He picks up her clothes, lays them in front of the fire to dry. “Why are you here? What happened?”

He stares intently at her face, as though to keep from looking down at her chest.

She rids herself of her trousers and smallclothes, stands in front of him naked. He looks down, then — he can’t help himself — but he’s clearly confused.

“What are you doing?” he asks, and for a moment she thinks he doesn’t want her anymore. But no, she knows that  _look_. The one where he wants to taste every bit of her. It makes her ache between her legs. 

She lies on his unmade bed, stretches out on it, lets her legs fall open. “Has it been so long for you that you’ve forgotten how to do it?”

“You told me you’d rather have your cunt be as dry as a Septa’s than ever fuck me again.”

She did say that. Because he went and did something  _stupid_ like propose marriage.

“My wife is dead,” he had said, “and I like you, you like me. We have really good sex, you won’t make me stop drinking and I won’t make you wear dresses or any of that womanly shit.”

And she swore: “If you ever ask me again, I will never fuck you again.”

He asked again two days later. She kept her promise. 

He asked many times during the three years they haven’t laid together. She knew he liked her and she liked him — for what he was — but she didn’t know why he had to ruin it.

But she missed being with him, someone who knows exactly what she wants, someone who is just as lonely as her.

He takes off his clothes quickly like he’s afraid she’ll change her mind. He crawls on the bed and kisses her hungrily, his teeth scraping at her bottom lip. His hand goes between her thighs and she feels his fingers go slick inside her.

“You’re there already?” He growls low in her ear. “You’re  _drenched_ , did you—did you just have someone else—?”

“I swear if you don’t fuck me I will find someone else who will— _ah_.”

He shoves in her without warning, thrusting so hard and deep that her mind goes blessedly blank. She arches up into it, grunts as he drags out and pushes in again. She closes her eyes and focuses on that and the weight of him on top of her and his scent and his grip on her waist, all reminding her that it isn’t  him . Good enough that she can forget what it was like with him—

“Brienne?”

She opens her eyes. Bronn is looking at her concerned, and she doesn’t fuck him because he cares about her.

He wipes at her cheek with his thumb. It comes away wet. He stares at it in wonder, like if she were injured.

She wraps her legs around his waist, digs her nails into his shoulders. He touches her face, but she turns her head and bites his fingers. He snaps his hips forward hard and she doesn’t hold back and she shouts, louder, and he hits that one place inside her just right. She comes easily — she had been on the edge since earlier — and it crashes over her like a wave slamming against the rocks. She comes up for air and he’s still there. She flips him onto his back and she slides on him again and rides him rough until he says the dirtiest things she’s heard anyone ever say and he spills inside her and she comes again sometime during it.

*

“I’m not going to complain,” Bronn says, after. They’re laying on top of the blankets, cooling off. “But why do I have the feeling that I’d be flattering myself if I believed that was about me?”

“Fuck off.”

“Give an old man a few hours.” He props himself up on his elbow, looks at her too seriously. “But what  was that? What changed your mind about us?”

“I needed to get laid,” she said, then added, “I’m still not marrying you.”

“I didn’t think so.” He lies down next to her, on his side. “Who was it about, because you don’t get that emotional—”

She groans.

“—about me.” He narrows his eyes. “Were you pretending I was—”

“No.” Never.

He made a thoughtful noise. “You were upset about something. Another man? The one who was so kind and got you good and wet before me? Was it that Northern bastard?”

“Cameron,” she says, correcting him, and she winces when he goes  _aha!_

“You fucked him!” He slaps her flank. “Damn. He probably blew his load as soon as he got his cock in you. That’s why you jumped in my bed, you needed a  real man to get you to come.”

“That isn’t why.” She doesn’t know how to explain: it was too real with Cameron. He might love her.

“So you fancy him.”

“No,” she says. “He’s annoying, and stupid, and so arrogant.”

“Reminds you of someone, eh?”

“You’re not stupid.”

Bronn, usually quick with a reply, is silent for too long. She looks to him and he says, “I meant Jaime, but thanks.”

Maybe he feels it too,  she thinks — they had been friends, maybe—

No. She is the stupid one to think that Jaime could come back — it sounds like a stupid romantic song. She should wish Jaime’s spirit peace. She needs to let go.

But he won’t let her.

A snore interrupts her thoughts. Next to her, Bronn has fallen blissfully asleep.

She’s envious. 

She gets out of bed, covers him with the blanket, goes to the small sofa next to the fire, curls up on it and goes to sleep. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks to bluecarrot for helping through this and listening to me blabbing my ideas.
> 
> and yes:  
> Tyrion + ? = Duncan
> 
> anyway, emotions are terrible. i don’t recommend them.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Brienne goes home.

The next morning when Brienne wakes up on Bronn’s sofa, she has clarity: Cameron Snow is not her Jaime reborn.

What was she thinking? He was just like any other man. She’s been with enough men to know. It’s all about their pride and their cock, and often, those were the same. No man she’s lain with was as good as it was with Jaime, but she doesn’t expect anyone to be better. She didn’t want someone better.

Fucking around helped. Sex feels nice and why shouldn’t she do it? She wasn’t a maid anymore and she never wanted to marry, and she was never worried about an heir — and then she had Duncan, so that matter was settled. People shamed her, told her,  _maybe you should be careful_ _,_ to which she replied,  _maybe you should shut up_ _,_ and then flaunted her partners more. She was granted knighthood and respect on the battlefield like a man, so she thought she should also have the same freedom men have to fuck who she wants. 

It’s almost humorous that when she was younger and ugly it was a joke to marry and bed her, but when she was older and still ugly she could get as much cock as a whore. She wondered what changed. Fame? Confidence? The fact that the handsomest man in Westeros got there first?

She knew that’s why Cameron wanted her. He wasn’t cruel like a lot of men, but his reason was of the same. He wanted her because she was herself. To fuck Brienne of Tarth, the lady knight. He saw her fight when he was a boy and developed a crush. Now that he’s fucked her he would either be over her or heartbroken. It isn’t her responsibility. He had reminded her of Jaime, but many things remind her of Jaime. The forest, kisses on her neck, crackle of a fireplace. If she really wanted someone like Jaime, she would have fucked Tyrion. 

And so, she gets on her ship and heads back to Tarth, without sparing another thought of the northerner with kind eyes.

*

Until he’s brought to her later.

“Stowaway,” says Podrick. He pushes Cameron forward. “He was hiding in the storage room.”

Cameron smirks. He looks proud of himself. Brienne won’t have that. She won’t award his persistence with approval.

She gets up from her chair, walks around him, staring him down. His dark hair is loose and messy and he’s dirty and his clothes are covered with sawdust but he stands tall at a soldier’s posture.

“Stealing passage on a ship is a crime,” she says. “So, what should I do with you?”

“Punish me, ser.”

Pod makes an alarmed sound that he covers with a cough. Brienne feels a blush take over her. She would love to smack that impudent grin off Cameron’s face. Then kiss him. Then smack him again.

She shouldn’t have fucked him.

“We are in the middle of the water,” she says. “We’ll be to Tarth by nightfall, but it’s too far to swim if I were to toss you overboard.”

“I don’t know how to swim,” says Cameron, and then he looks up at her. “Perhaps you should tie me up. Keep me as your prisoner.”

She will not think of Jaime. Will not.

“I’ll decide once we are to Tarth,” Brienne says. “For now, you will have a meal.” He looks like he hasn’t had consistent nourishment for a while.

“Thank you, ser. But—“

She gestures for Pod to take him away before he can say anything else.

*

Duncan was four years old when she told him the truth.

She had always planned to, when he was old enough to understand. Someone else would’ve told him if she didn’t, or they would tell him lies like: Jaime Lannister is his father. Although, she had entertained the thought,  _maybe I don’t have to tell him. It doesn’t matter — I’m raising him as my own. He is a Tarth._

But that was selfish, pretending everything was fine. She supposed she was afraid that he wouldn’t like her anymore. He never saw her as ugly or too masculine or as a failure. She was just _mama_ . If she wasn’t that anymore, he would have no reason to love her unconditionally. But he deserved to know. She didn’t want to lie to him, even if it protected herself.

And so: she told him.  _I’m not your real mother._ It was the hardest thing she’d ever done. 

“I don’t understand.” Duncan sat in the chair across from her. His legs swung, not touching the floor. “You’re my mother.”

She sighed. “You know how Amy’s belly grew and then she had her baby?”

Duncan nodded. He had been very curious when the cook was pregnant. Brienne had answered all his questions, except when he put his hand on her stomach and asked, “was I in here?” and she had to _lie_ and say, “you were in your mother’s.” It wasn’t really a lie, but he ...

“Well,” she continued, “you weren’t — you didn’t come from me.”

He blinked at her. He wasn’t understanding.

“Another woman — your true mother — she bore you, but she...”

_She didn’t want you._

“She couldn’t take care of you,” Brienne said. “But I could, so I took you as my own.”

It didn’t go as simply as that — Tyrion had begged her, said _I_ _don’t trust anyone else_ and _they would kill him if they knew_ and then he brought the babe to her so she would have to see the child she was condemning to a tragic life, and she couldn’t let one more person die.

“He needs a body guard, not a mother,” Brienne had said. Tyrion shrugged and replied, “Then be both.”

“You aren’t really my child,” she said. “You needed to know that.”

Duncan’s lip trembled, and then he burst into tears.

Part of her believed that he had to get through it because life is unfair, but she wanted to scoop him up and coddle him until he stopped crying. She stepped closer to him but he curled up and wailed louder.

She knew she was right. She was too cold, too impersonal to be a mother. 

Pod stuck his head in the door, looked between Brienne who was awkwardly standing in front a sobbing Duncan. He must have surmised from her expression that it was her fault.

“What did you do?” Pod asked. He went over to Duncan, who reached his arms up and Pod picked him up. Pod rubbed his back as he cried on his shoulder. “Brienne?”

Pod slipped into the use of her given namein special circumstances, such as: scolding.

“I told him,” she said. “That I wasn’t. He wasn’t mine.”

Pod swore under his breath. “He’s still a babe. Why did you tell him?”

“He needed to know.” Her excuse sounded feeble even to herself.

“He doesn’t care about that.”

“He was going to know eventually.”

“Eventually,” Pod says. “But you didn’t tell him for his benefit. You did it because of damn honor, because you feel guilty—”

“Stop.”

Pod frowned. He didn’t look satisfied with discussion, but he said no more. Duncan’s cries quieted to a small sniffle. Brienne ran her hand through his golden curls, and then left.

That night, she went to Duncan. He was sleeping, but he woke when she sat on the edge of his bed.

“Mama?” he asked, and Brienne could have wept with relief.

“Yes,” she said, and she kissed his forehead. “I’m here.”

He made a content sound and snuggled up to her. She thought he was asleep again but then he said, “You’re still my mama.”

Brienne did cry, then.

*

She waited a few months to tell him the identity of his father, even though Tyrion didn’t want him to know. That conversation went much better. 

*

Brienne thinks maybe she should have thrown Cameron overboard. 

She does not like him. Despite their challenge in the melee, he and Duncan quickly befriend each other, chatting about their favorite weapons to use and sharing dumb jokes like young men do. She thinks of stopping them but that would just make an issue, so instead she stews in silence during their journey back.

Her initial assessment is correct and he’s horribly arrogant — he tells them stories of the North, boasting that he’s been beyond the wall. Brienne points out that there hasn’t been anything dangerous in the far North in decades. He blushes, humiliated, which is satisfying. However, it’s a mistake because he starts obliquely flirting with her.  _Ser, could you give me some lessons? I’ve seen how well you can handle a sword._

“I bet you have,” mutters Bronn. It looks like he has more to say, but he falls silent when Brienne glares at him.

Cameron has caused enough upheaval in her life and she wants him gone. She’s willing to pay his passage to send him North so she will never have to see him again, but she thinks of a strike to match her parry, an honest smile, a familiar heartbeat under her touch.

When they approach land, she finds him on the deck. It’s well into evening, but the moon is bright, light reflecting on the water surrounding her island and on the glass on the keep.

“I have that feeling again,” he says, “like I’ve done this before.”

_“Take me home,” Jaime had said, “to Tarth,” and she believed him—_

“You can stay with me, for a while,” Brienne says. “If you want.”

She says it ahead, into the night. She feels his gaze on her.

“Thank you, my lady.”

“That’s _ser_ to you.”

“Yes, ser,” he says and she turns to look at him and they crash together at the same time, her mouth on his and his on hers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SORRY for the long wait, sorry


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> At Tarth.

Tarth isn’t at all elegant, but Cameron acts as though it’s a royal palace. It shows that the boy really hasn’t been around much and hasn’t experienced the finer way of life. He is nothing like Jaime Lannister. If Cameron is shocked by Tarth, he would faint at Casterly Rock’s display of wealth.

(She visited a few times with Tyrion; she slept in Jaime’s bedroom and thought of him there beside her; she would have told him how the waves sounded different than the ones that crash on Tarth’s shores.)

She ushers Cameron into Evenfall with her, daring anyone to say anything to her. Although, it isn’t the first time she’s brought home a scruffy-looking man with a questionable background.

She wishes someone _would_ say something. She’s in the mood for a fight. She’d like to fight Cameron, but instead she kissed him and then invited him home, and now he’s here, breathing the same air as her, looking at the curtains like they’re spun with gold.

She should have pushed him overboard. 

Duncan goes off on his own, while Pod and Bronn stay with her, being her self-appointed posse. They seem to expect her to do something about the northerner — she scowls and sides up to him.

“I’ll set you up with a room.”

Cameron looks away from the high-vaulted ceiling to her. “Why not your room?”

Bronn laughs. She doesn’t even have to look to know it was him because she knows that laugh, loud and rude, but she snaps her head over her shoulder to make him shut up. He does. Pod, always a good boy, doesn’t say anything, but his expression looks like he wishes he isn’t there. 

She turns back to Cameron. She knows she blushing. Damn it all.

“I don’t let dogs sleep in my room,” she says, dryly, “or actual dogs, for that matter.”

Cameron’s mouth lifts into a half grin and Brienne knows he’s going to say something awful, and he does, “I don’t want to sleep—“

“Podrick,” Brienne says, cutting Cameron off before he can embarrass himself (and her) further. “Please assist Cameron in finding his room, and direct him where he can find a change of clothes.”

“Yes, Ser,” says Pod, and he dutifully pushes at Cameron’s shoulder until he starts walking.

Brienne watches as he goes. He looks back at her. It feels like he wants to say something, feels like she should say something, but they both keep it to themselves.

*

“I didn’t invite you, either,” says Brienne, but she lets Bronn in and she closes the door to her room behind him. If she hadn’t let him in, he would have picked the lock and cane inside, anyway. There is no getting rid of him.

“You’ve wanted me here before,” Bronn says. He sits in the chair he’s all but claimed as his. When Brienne sits in it, it smells like him. Depending on the day it makes her very angry or fond.

He spreads his legs wide apart, as men do to compensate for their poor delicate balls. Brienne glares at him and he just grins at her. 

“You’ve wanted me here,” he says. “You’ve had me here. Even in this very chair—“

“Do you need something?” she asks, interrupting him. “Or are you just here to annoy me?”

“Isn’t that what I do?” Bronn asks. “Actually, I wanted to talk about your new fella—”

“Jealous?” It’s not unheard of from him, but he usually hides it better because he knows she hates it. His embarrassment shows — she has known him for far too long.

She goes to him and tilts his chin up so he looks up at her. 

“Worry not,” she says. “You’ll always be my favorite sellsword.”

He swats her hand away. “I know the lil’ squirt is your current...interest.”

“Don’t call him that.”

“He doesn’t look like much of anything,” says Bronn. “You deserve a man of experience. You’re getting old, Brienne. He’s much too young for you.”

_Old._ Humph.

“There isn’t much difference in years between us compared to when I was with Jaime.”

She knows she should have kept that thought to herself. Bronn smirks at her, he knows what she’s thinking, and she feels so incredibly, incredibly visible.

“Still, that fool?” he asks. “After all these years?”

“Fuck off,” she says, and she leaves her room, because it’s easier than making him leave.

*

Some days, she misses Tyrion more than Jaime. Tyrion was a different kind of companionship that she needed — he had an understanding what it was like to be harassed for his appearance, he was genuinely funny, and when he wanted to, he could be kind. Tyrion would joke, _she_ _took_ _the rest of my height for herself,_ and nobody would laugh but her.

Damn Lannisters and them dying when she needed them. 

Tyrion used to tell her when she needed to — in his words — lighten up.

She could also say: he was a bad influence.

“You are taking the evening off,” he told her, back when they both lived in Kings Landing, before Duncan was even thought of. “And I’m taking the evening off, and we are both going to get very, very drunk.”

“I can’t,” Brienne started, “the King—“

“Podrick is covering your watch,” Tyrion said. “And besides, the King won’t even know. He’s...”

He waved his hand and Brienne understood. King Bran’s mind was adventuring somewhere else.

“Why?” she asked.

“Because you’re miserable.”

“I’m not—“

“I meant — I’m miserable.” He held up two bottles of wine. “Join me in not being miserable?”

It had been many years since his drinking game, and she did enjoy his company, so—

“Jaime never knew how to have fun,” said Tyrion, several glasses of wine later. He and Brienne were crammed on the same couch, sitting on opposite ends and facing each other. 

“Yes,” said Brienne, agreeing. She held out her hand for the bottle; when Tyrion gave it to her she drank from it.

He raised his brow at her. “I wouldn’t expect you to know how to have fun, either.”

Brienne gasped. “I am so much fun!”

Tyrion’s grin overtook his face — at least he wasn’t miserable, anymore. “If you say so.”

“I am!” Brienne sat up so she could be closer to him. The room tilted a bit too the left and she realized she was probably drunker than she intended. Nevertheless, “I am very fun, Lannister.” She was quiet a moment, then, “Jaime thought I was fun.”

Tyrion made a face like he was in pain. Right — he was probably drinking to forget him. No amount of liquor wiped Jaime from Brienne’s memory. Wine reminded her of him, as did nearly everything else.

Tyrion sighed and slumped against her. “Do you want me to tell you a story?”

“It depends.”

“It’s about a handsome, brave knight,” said Tyrion. “Golden haired and tall, but a bit reckless.”

“He sounds like a dolt.” Brienne shifted more comfortably against Tyrion. “Go on.”

“He had a little brother that was a monster,” Tyrion said. “The brave knight was the only one who didn’t see him as a monster.”

Brienne felt his breathing hitch. She ran a hand through his hair, soothing him. She had calmed Jaime the same way — when he woke up from a fiery nightmare, horrors past, and future.

Tyrion continued. “Nobody hated the monster more than his and the knight’s father. He kept the monster locked away when others came to visit. They would ask about his younger son, because they’ve heard about the monster, but the father would all but deny the existence of him.”

Brienne was glad she never met Tywin Lannister. She would’ve had to punch him once for Jaime, and then twice for Tyrion. When she was a child, she was gawked at by visitors, but her father was never ashamed of her size or her awkwardness. He never hid her away; in fact her father made her be present. She couldn’t imagine her own father...

“The monster had to become very, very clever to survive,” Tyrion said. “However, it wasn’t always enough. But the knight, his big brother, was there to protect him. He protected the monster from their father’s rage. On one occasion, when the father was feeling especially bothered by the monster’s presence, the knight tore the tapestries in their father’s room. On accident, of course.”

Brienne snorted. “On accident how?”

“Sparring and lost control of his sword — all the way across the room — was his explanation,” said Tyrion. “It was disobedient enough that our—the father spent the next two days yelling at the knight instead of the monster.”

That was just like Jaime. Like jumping into a bear pit unarmed and one-handed. Nobody else had that type of kindness.

If only he had seen it within himself. 

“I miss him,” Tyrion said.

“Me too.”

*

The baths of Tarth are the best there are — tropical warmth, and infused with minerals from the natural springs. Brienne wants nothing more to soak and put her aches and worries to rest and have the solitude to _think._

But there is a northerner in her bath.

“Ser Podrick told me I could,” says Cameron. “He said my smell was offensive.”

_Your_ _presence_ _is offensive,_ Brienne thinks. But not really — she is only tired, and maybe hungry. And maybe horny.

“I’ll be done soon,” Cameron says, and then smiling — no, smirking — “or you can join me.”

She thinks she would rather push his head under water, instead. But—

“Alright,” and she begins to strip off her clothes, first her thin jacket, then undoing her belt as she stepped out of her boots simultaneously. 

And next Cameron is sputtering and splashing about in the water — he didn’t expect her to call his bluff. He’s young and an idiot, which aren’t dependent on the other but in this case he’s both. He stares at her as she lets the last of her clothing fall to the floor — stares at her, wide-eyed and slack jawed. She doesn’t know if it’s because he has a big stupid crush on her, or because now he’s getting a good look at her body and he has regrets about his liking of her.

He doesn’t say anything as she enters the water, but he doesn’t take his eyes off her. The baths of Tarth are deep and the water is over his chest. She faces him, and while they are beyond arm’s reach, they are very close.

He sinks deeper into the water. “I was bathing, ser.”

“I need to as well,” she says, and of course she’s thinking of Harrenhal and Jaime — him fevered and hurt and angry, faint in her arms, telling her to call him _Jaime._

She goes under water to wet her hair, and to wash away the feeling of him. The weight of him in her arms. She stays under until she runs out of air.

When she surfaces, Cameron is looking at her strangely. Like he wants to ask her something.

“What?” 

“I can’t figure it out,” he says. “Why did you invite me here?”

“It was either that, or throw you overboard.”

He makes a disbelieving sound. “Or you could have sent me home.”

“I still could.” She almost did, but she knows that he knows that she won’t, so she changes the subject. “Tell me, Cameron Snow — why did you go to Kings Landing?”

“We’ve been over this. I went to compete in the tournament,” he says, “with the hope that you’d be there.”

“That’s all?”

He lets out an angry huff. “I wanted—needed to prove myself. That I’m not just a bastard nobody. I wanted to prove I have _honor—”_

Brienne doesn’t miss how the word sticks in his throat, like it’s barbed and causes him pain to force it out. Because she’s felt that, too. For as many good things honor has brought her, it comes along with grief and pain because to her, honor means Jaime—

“I thought,” he continues, “that if I fought you, then I would have it. Honor. But I think it isn’t meant to be.”

“Did you think fucking me would give you honor?”

It was the wrong thing to say. It hadn’t been like that, she had wanted it too. He isn’t like other men who wanted to fuck to her just to say they have, or pretended to be interested because the thought of it is funny. She and Cameron have a connection, even if she doesn’t understand it.

Cameron is humiliated. He’s blushing and he looks injured, his stupid sad eyes saying too much. He stands, cupping his hands over his cock, and goes to climb out but Brienne crosses the distance in one stride and grabs his arm.

“I’m sorry — I didn’t mean—“ She sighs. “Just finish your damn bath, alright?”

He seems unsure, and he stands there for a moment, standing taller than her, naked, and hiding his bits. She can’t help but let her eyes travel down. She gets a good look at him where she didn’t before — it was hurried and they were in the half dark. He’s more muscular than he appears in his clothing, his skin quite pale, and she can just make out a birthmark on his lower back. He’s freshly bruised all over, like a piece of fruit that fell off the cart.

And then further down, where it’s becoming more difficult to contain himself with his hands. Her gaze flits back up to his. He eases back into the water, this time much closer to her.

And apparently, with renewed confidence. He smiles, sly, and she thinks he purposely brushes his foot against hers underwater.

Men are idiots.

She puts her hand to his chest, over a purple and yellow bruise. She feels him flex his muscle. She wants to laugh but instead, she humors him.

“I can tell you’ve trained hard.”

“Ah, hard. Yes.” He licks his lips. “I’m a little sore there. Perhaps you could rub it?”

“Here?” Brienne rubs his chest, but she then drops her hand down and wraps her hand around his cock and asks, “or here?”

He lets out a noise that’s somewhere between a whimper and a gasp. He covers his mouth to stifle it.

Gods. He is cute.

She gently takes his hand off his mouth, presses a kiss to his parted lips. “Nobody will hear you,” she says, “but if they do, they won’t think anything of it.”

“What—“ he starts but he stutters and has to start again. “What about ser Bronn?”

She scoffs. “Bronn and I have an understanding.” Bronn does not like it, but it isn’t her fault he developed too many emotions when he shouldn’t have.

“Oh.”

She stokes him, feels him twitch in her hand. He thrusts into her grip, moans.

“Cameron?”

“Hmm?”

“Were you a virgin before...before we were together?”

He clears his throat. He hesitates. She knew he was — how odd it is that it’s shameful for men to be a virgin, but it’s shameful for women if they aren’t.

“It’s alright,” she says. She kisses the side of his face. “I was one, once.”

“I’ve had a woman put their hand on me before — kinda,” says Cameron. “But was I that bad? How did you know? I can do better—?”

“Hush,” she tells him, and she takes her hand off him because she really _really_ wants to get to a bed before he comes in the bath. She steps out first and he follows. She puts on her robe and he hastily dresses himself in borrowed clothes. He takes too long to attempt to put on boots so she tells him, “don’t bother,” and she drags him barefoot through the halls of her home. 

She hopes that Bronn has left her room because she doesn’t want to experience the awkwardness of throwing him out. 

But her room is blessedly empty. She lets her robe fall off her shoulders and onto the floor. Cameron mutters something she doesn’t understand but she drags him into a kiss — their skin is still damp and he smells like her soap. He moans when she touches him through his trousers and he begs, “please, please—“

She has to help him undress because he’s too damn nervous. She told herself this time she would go slower and enjoy it — not a frantic fuck in the hold of a ship in the middle of a thunderstorm — but he doesn’t want to be patient and neither does she. 

She lays back and beckons him to be on top. He takes a few seconds to kneel between her legs and look at her cunt, but then he gets inside her fast. A bit too fast but she’s very wet and she likes some roughness. She rests a hand on his back, steadying him, while she twists the sheets in her other hand.

Gods, it feels so good. Right. It’s better this time — it’s like he knows how to move with her, knows how to kiss her, and when she closes her eyes she could swear—

She forces herself to look at him. Brown eyes. Dark hair, black as night. Crooked teeth. Two hands. 

She bites the inside of her cheek to keep silent when she comes.

*

After, he lays on her, breathing hard into her ear. She pushes him off of her, gets off the bed.

He sits up. “Are you going to leave me again?”

Was she? She thought about it. She’s so used to leaving, after, and how he makes her feel makes her want to flee, but—

“No.” She picks up a pair of her boots and tosses them at him. “Get dressed. We’re going to train.”

He catches one shoe but the other lands on the ground. He lets the other fall, too. “Now?” he asks. “You’ve tired me out.”

He’s smug, now that he’s made her come.

“I have plenty of energy left yet,” Brienne says. “Unless—“

“Yes,” he says, and she falls back into bed with him and it is so very easy to want him. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the author kind of forgot how to write 
> 
> many many thanks to forpeaches, for kicking me back on track and for the bits I borrowed/stole and wrote in

**Author's Note:**

> This would not leave me alone.


End file.
